dear yuletide author
Firstly: Yay! Thank you for writing me something :3 I know the flailing and gnashing of teeth that yuletide tends to involve so I just want to assure you that your efforts are appreciated.
The following shall serve both to elaborate my prompts and to advertise the fandoms a little bit for blowins and treaters. Go nuts!
Guitar Wolf: Wild Zero (2009)
This movie does not, as far as I know, have any fanfiction about it, although it does have a fandom, in the sense that occasionally I will mention it to someone and they will flail and go OH MY GOD THAT MOVIE AMAZE. Because it is, in fact, AMAZE, for given values of AMAZE that lie on the graph of MAXIMUM RIDICULOSITY.
It’s a band movie! It’s a zombie movie! It’s a road trip movie! It’s a transgender love story! It’s an alien invasion! It’s a love letter to rock’n’roll! I don’t even!
The signup summary lists exactly one offer, so the following will be quite explanatory in order to lure in the aforementioned blowins and treaters. You know you want to watch a movie that will get you smashed if you take a shot any time someone combs their hair or something that should not under any circumstances shoot fire shoots fire.
If you are, in fact, that solitary offerer, then we have been matched AGAINST GREAT ODDS and you are clearly a person of IMPECCABLE TASTE, so I don’t really need to elaborate on my prompts. But I will anyway!
Yamazaki: the badass arms dealer who get stood up by the fucking Yakuza on account of them being a little busy being eaten by zombies like a bunch of wimps. Other characters in this movie fight zombies by flailing at them and screaming a lot, or by pulling out ridiculous overpowered weapons. This lady, despite being literally caught with her pants down, coolly fights her way from the shower to her armoured car using nothing but her emergency bath-time gun. I love her.
My prompt: I basically just think there wasn't enough badass arms dealer in the original :3 give us some backstory or just some adventure. She reminds me of Indiana Jones a bit. If there is sex I want to be pretty clear that in my mind Y is the toppiest top ever to top and not particularly sentimental.
Guitar Wolf: The Band. Known in this movie only by their instruments with the suffix "Wolf". Short on individual personality, long on ROCK AND ROOOOLLLLL. I’m going to see them live in December. When I mentioned this to another fan of the movie they expressed disbelief because they had thought Guitar Wolf was fictional like Spinal Tap. This doesn’t count as RPIS, though, because I’m pretty sure the real dudes have never made anyone’s head explode except in a figurative sense.
My prompt: Hilarious adventures likewise, possibly in conjunction with Yamazaki. Bring on the guitarna!!!! And the guitar pick shuriken lol, or if you invent some other hilariously unlikely rock'n'roll weapon that would be great. I don't have a ship but I don't mind if you want to slash it up a bit.
Ace/Tobio: The Couple. My prompt pretty much says it all.
My prompt: They're soooo cuuuuuuuute :3 Ace is such a flailing fanboy and Tobio is so preternaturally calm alternating with deer/headlights faces. Meet the family fic!? Kidfic!? Something! Or if you want to write one without the other, Tobio backstory or Ace, um, tooling around on his motorbike? idk. Maybe his first Guitar Wolf concert.
The rest of my prompt: If you're stuck on those characters but want to write some shipfic, I also think the other canon couple is adorable, including the postzombification version. ...Masao was pretty funny too, so Zombie Road Trip fic would be acceptable. I will literally read anything in this fandom, on account of how it currently does not exist.
Oh, no general preferences on sexual stuff, totally up to you. M/F, M/M, F/F, M/?, F/M/M/M, whatever. Gen through to NC-17 is all fine, so are whatever kinks seem in character. That goes for all my prompts. Don't stick in silly things like mpreg or tentacles without utilising their full hilarity potential, though. I do not expect angstfic in this fandom, I am just saying.
Hainish Cycle - Ursula Le Guin
This is one of my favourite fictional universes. A series of loosely connected novels and short stories that, using the conceit of an ancient progenitor species feeling a bit shit for seeding a bunch of planets with genetic experiments and then losing contact with them (a bit like an alien deadbeat dad) and wanting to reconnect everyone into a happy civilised family, explores a whole bunch of really interesting social issues. The planet where the male:female ratio is 1:16, the planet where gender isn’t even a thing for three quarters of every month, the planet where everybody lives in giant rainforests, the planet where small talk is drastically taboo… I love it. Le Guin nearly always manages to stop short of preaching, although some stories are overtly didactic. The characters feel real. That’s important.
Okay, for this one we’re going to start with my prompt and then elaborate: Worldbuilding please! Specifically if possible worldbuilding for Left Hand of Darkness. I recently read an essay in which Le Guin expressed regret for sort of defaulting the Gethenians into heterosexuality by not describing anything else, when really anything goes in the Kemmerhouse.
That got me thinking about what it would actually MEAN to be queer on Gethen. I will speculate on this more in my DYA letter [ed. o/], but basically I want fic which a) explores what the inside of a Kemmerhouse is actually like without het-goggles, and b) if possible goes into what being queer by Gethen standards actually ~is~, since the only sexual deviancy we're really shown is the nonconsensual kind. And incest, I guess, but that can't possible be THE ONLY TABOO, forreal.
Fic does not have to involve canon characters but can if you like. I would prefer sex but it doesn't have to be super-graphic if you're not up to that...
Oh, and if by some accident this request has hit a person who has never read/does not have access to Left Hand of Darkness or any of the short stories that also explain Gethen, I'm really sorry and in a pinch would be pretty happy with any kind of worldbuilding fic in the thoughtful footsteps of Ursula Le Guin. My favourite Hain book is The Dispossessed and my favourite short story is "Solitude".
If this is still melting your brain I've included some easy-pick-up music requests.
And now: Speculation. Okay, so! What does it mean to be queer on Gethen, where normal means being literally sexless for like three weeks out of every four, and your body picking one for the other week according to the hormones of the person you want to bang? (Being Gethenian is kind of like the reverse of being a woman, in that your period is the best part.)
First of all, we have the basic canon answer: Us. Earth-normal human beings are SUPER queer on Gethen, on account of how our junk is hangin out there all month. But that’s no fun because there’s a fuckton of Gethenian history Before Contact, and also because I’m pretty sure they don’t let foreigners into the Kemmerhouse. It would be too weird.
So, if you’re native to Gethen, how can you be queer? Bisexuality isn’t queer, polyamory is not at all queer. Here’s my take: you can be physically queer by means of a kemmer malfunction - not getting it, having an irregular cycle, having a “homosexual” kemmer stimulation (i.e. growing the same genitals as the person you want to bang). Possibly also growing ambiguous genitalia during kemmer. You can be socially queer by simply preferring to bang people you currently share genitals with - if you’re monogamous and hormonally normal this is going to be awkward - or, if I recall the canon correctly, by having strong genital configuration preferences at all. Wanting to fuck a non-Gethenian is probably pretty queer, too. Oh, and there’s the boring old incest taboo that says you can’t pair off with someone from a generation which could theoretically make them your parent or child, but I’m less interested in that generally.
I’d love it if you came up with something I haven’t thought of, too, Yuletider, but have a think about the above and see if anything catches your imagination. As I said, you can use a canon character if you’re more comfortable with that, or you can make some people up.
David Koresh: Superstar (album)
David Koresh was the assumed name of a cult leader in Texas in the early 90s, who had a terrible moustache and proclaimed himself the Messiah and slept with some 15-yearolds and was generally a vaguely creepy sort of dude. His compound was raided by government forces and ended up burning down, killing over 70 people - right wing conspiracy theories about this event apparently abound. This concept album by the Indelicates is in the style of a musical in the style of Jesus Christ Superstar (I know, seriously). If you click through to the mp3 download link, they currently have an option to get it for free (all their music is available on a pay-what-you-like basis). This sort of project often turns out disastrously, but I’ll quote a reviewer here who captures one of the best things about it: “brainwashed cultists or not, the Indelicates refuse to make them - or Koresh himself - the butt of the joke, and it turns what might have been a simplistic and cruel comedy record in less deft hands into a genuinely tragic musical story.”
I also bought the lyrics booklet, which turned out to be an awesome idea since it has historical footnotes, I kid you not, as well as a couple about how much Simon Indelicate hates the Kinks, idk. My favourite songs are Something Going Down In Waco, The Ballad of the ATF and I Don’t Care If It’s True. I sort of really want to put it on as an actual musical, but there probably isn’t much interest here in Australia.
My prompt: I would like to see the Siege/surrounding events from the perspective of Jewel (the one who sings A Single Thrown Grenade).
Alternately, if the srs-bzns fic isn't taking you, I would be into some sort of hilarious sci-fi AU involving the ATF, or any of the other characters really, In Space.
Elaboration: I really like the way they tried to give a representative of the young girls Koresh seduced a bit of agency, a personality, etc. It makes me want to hear more of the story from that sort of perspective. It would be realistic for her to die at the end, but tha is not compulsory.
...and if you're stuck in lulz mode, everything is better In Space :P
Danger Days (album)
Ahhh, My Chemical Romance. Subject of so many emo jokes, yet quite obviously such awesome nerds. This is widely known (at least, among the fans I widely know) as their LARPing In The Desert album. If you’re not familiar, google the music videos! They’re pretty great, it’s like a cross between a cowboy movie and a superhero comic. Brightly coloured outfits! Guns (also brightly coloured)! Dudes in giant mouse heads (I don’t even)!
Like many others, I made myself a costume in the wake of the album launch, so you could say I’m sort of into it :P this is actually probably the most popular fandom on my request list, because it got heaps of Bandom trickle-down. Trickle-across? whatever. I’ve requested it before, though I think then I was more focused on Show Pony, as I had not yet had the following idea:
My prompt: I know the music videos never really established whose kid Grace Kelly played. I’d like a fic in which her mother is Jet Star’s sister, and her father is Korse, which is why he kidnapped her. Presumably the mom is absent due to being deeply under cover or in some section of the resistance that’s even less child-friendly than the Killjoys.
You can basically go wherever you want with that idea, backstory or rescuefic or whatever. Bonus points for Grace bonding with Show Pony.
Addendum: If you want to do some sort of Maximum Rock'n'Roll Crossover between this and Guitar Wolf, that would pretty amazing xD
In conclusion, as you can see I'm pretty well-balanced between options for lulz and options for thinkyfic, both of which are things I enjoy greatly. I don't have literary triggers for you to avoid, and my major squick is Adam Sandler. I'd do the whole spiel about woman/queer/etc-friendly writing, but I think my prompts and flailing sort of do that for me - stick to the spirit if not the letter (because optional details, of course, are optional) of my requests and you should do fine. The Hainish Cycle prompt is the only one that really should have sexual content, but any of them can if that's the way you roll. I hope I've provided enough options for you to find one that really grabs you. Have fun :)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth |
comments there
The following shall serve both to elaborate my prompts and to advertise the fandoms a little bit for blowins and treaters. Go nuts!
Guitar Wolf: Wild Zero (2009)
This movie does not, as far as I know, have any fanfiction about it, although it does have a fandom, in the sense that occasionally I will mention it to someone and they will flail and go OH MY GOD THAT MOVIE AMAZE. Because it is, in fact, AMAZE, for given values of AMAZE that lie on the graph of MAXIMUM RIDICULOSITY.
It’s a band movie! It’s a zombie movie! It’s a road trip movie! It’s a transgender love story! It’s an alien invasion! It’s a love letter to rock’n’roll! I don’t even!
The signup summary lists exactly one offer, so the following will be quite explanatory in order to lure in the aforementioned blowins and treaters. You know you want to watch a movie that will get you smashed if you take a shot any time someone combs their hair or something that should not under any circumstances shoot fire shoots fire.
If you are, in fact, that solitary offerer, then we have been matched AGAINST GREAT ODDS and you are clearly a person of IMPECCABLE TASTE, so I don’t really need to elaborate on my prompts. But I will anyway!
Yamazaki: the badass arms dealer who get stood up by the fucking Yakuza on account of them being a little busy being eaten by zombies like a bunch of wimps. Other characters in this movie fight zombies by flailing at them and screaming a lot, or by pulling out ridiculous overpowered weapons. This lady, despite being literally caught with her pants down, coolly fights her way from the shower to her armoured car using nothing but her emergency bath-time gun. I love her.
My prompt: I basically just think there wasn't enough badass arms dealer in the original :3 give us some backstory or just some adventure. She reminds me of Indiana Jones a bit. If there is sex I want to be pretty clear that in my mind Y is the toppiest top ever to top and not particularly sentimental.
Guitar Wolf: The Band. Known in this movie only by their instruments with the suffix "Wolf". Short on individual personality, long on ROCK AND ROOOOLLLLL. I’m going to see them live in December. When I mentioned this to another fan of the movie they expressed disbelief because they had thought Guitar Wolf was fictional like Spinal Tap. This doesn’t count as RPIS, though, because I’m pretty sure the real dudes have never made anyone’s head explode except in a figurative sense.
My prompt: Hilarious adventures likewise, possibly in conjunction with Yamazaki. Bring on the guitarna!!!! And the guitar pick shuriken lol, or if you invent some other hilariously unlikely rock'n'roll weapon that would be great. I don't have a ship but I don't mind if you want to slash it up a bit.
Ace/Tobio: The Couple. My prompt pretty much says it all.
My prompt: They're soooo cuuuuuuuute :3 Ace is such a flailing fanboy and Tobio is so preternaturally calm alternating with deer/headlights faces. Meet the family fic!? Kidfic!? Something! Or if you want to write one without the other, Tobio backstory or Ace, um, tooling around on his motorbike? idk. Maybe his first Guitar Wolf concert.
The rest of my prompt: If you're stuck on those characters but want to write some shipfic, I also think the other canon couple is adorable, including the postzombification version. ...Masao was pretty funny too, so Zombie Road Trip fic would be acceptable. I will literally read anything in this fandom, on account of how it currently does not exist.
Oh, no general preferences on sexual stuff, totally up to you. M/F, M/M, F/F, M/?, F/M/M/M, whatever. Gen through to NC-17 is all fine, so are whatever kinks seem in character. That goes for all my prompts. Don't stick in silly things like mpreg or tentacles without utilising their full hilarity potential, though. I do not expect angstfic in this fandom, I am just saying.
Hainish Cycle - Ursula Le Guin
This is one of my favourite fictional universes. A series of loosely connected novels and short stories that, using the conceit of an ancient progenitor species feeling a bit shit for seeding a bunch of planets with genetic experiments and then losing contact with them (a bit like an alien deadbeat dad) and wanting to reconnect everyone into a happy civilised family, explores a whole bunch of really interesting social issues. The planet where the male:female ratio is 1:16, the planet where gender isn’t even a thing for three quarters of every month, the planet where everybody lives in giant rainforests, the planet where small talk is drastically taboo… I love it. Le Guin nearly always manages to stop short of preaching, although some stories are overtly didactic. The characters feel real. That’s important.
Okay, for this one we’re going to start with my prompt and then elaborate: Worldbuilding please! Specifically if possible worldbuilding for Left Hand of Darkness. I recently read an essay in which Le Guin expressed regret for sort of defaulting the Gethenians into heterosexuality by not describing anything else, when really anything goes in the Kemmerhouse.
That got me thinking about what it would actually MEAN to be queer on Gethen. I will speculate on this more in my DYA letter [ed. o/], but basically I want fic which a) explores what the inside of a Kemmerhouse is actually like without het-goggles, and b) if possible goes into what being queer by Gethen standards actually ~is~, since the only sexual deviancy we're really shown is the nonconsensual kind. And incest, I guess, but that can't possible be THE ONLY TABOO, forreal.
Fic does not have to involve canon characters but can if you like. I would prefer sex but it doesn't have to be super-graphic if you're not up to that...
Oh, and if by some accident this request has hit a person who has never read/does not have access to Left Hand of Darkness or any of the short stories that also explain Gethen, I'm really sorry and in a pinch would be pretty happy with any kind of worldbuilding fic in the thoughtful footsteps of Ursula Le Guin. My favourite Hain book is The Dispossessed and my favourite short story is "Solitude".
If this is still melting your brain I've included some easy-pick-up music requests.
And now: Speculation. Okay, so! What does it mean to be queer on Gethen, where normal means being literally sexless for like three weeks out of every four, and your body picking one for the other week according to the hormones of the person you want to bang? (Being Gethenian is kind of like the reverse of being a woman, in that your period is the best part.)
First of all, we have the basic canon answer: Us. Earth-normal human beings are SUPER queer on Gethen, on account of how our junk is hangin out there all month. But that’s no fun because there’s a fuckton of Gethenian history Before Contact, and also because I’m pretty sure they don’t let foreigners into the Kemmerhouse. It would be too weird.
So, if you’re native to Gethen, how can you be queer? Bisexuality isn’t queer, polyamory is not at all queer. Here’s my take: you can be physically queer by means of a kemmer malfunction - not getting it, having an irregular cycle, having a “homosexual” kemmer stimulation (i.e. growing the same genitals as the person you want to bang). Possibly also growing ambiguous genitalia during kemmer. You can be socially queer by simply preferring to bang people you currently share genitals with - if you’re monogamous and hormonally normal this is going to be awkward - or, if I recall the canon correctly, by having strong genital configuration preferences at all. Wanting to fuck a non-Gethenian is probably pretty queer, too. Oh, and there’s the boring old incest taboo that says you can’t pair off with someone from a generation which could theoretically make them your parent or child, but I’m less interested in that generally.
I’d love it if you came up with something I haven’t thought of, too, Yuletider, but have a think about the above and see if anything catches your imagination. As I said, you can use a canon character if you’re more comfortable with that, or you can make some people up.
David Koresh: Superstar (album)
David Koresh was the assumed name of a cult leader in Texas in the early 90s, who had a terrible moustache and proclaimed himself the Messiah and slept with some 15-yearolds and was generally a vaguely creepy sort of dude. His compound was raided by government forces and ended up burning down, killing over 70 people - right wing conspiracy theories about this event apparently abound. This concept album by the Indelicates is in the style of a musical in the style of Jesus Christ Superstar (I know, seriously). If you click through to the mp3 download link, they currently have an option to get it for free (all their music is available on a pay-what-you-like basis). This sort of project often turns out disastrously, but I’ll quote a reviewer here who captures one of the best things about it: “brainwashed cultists or not, the Indelicates refuse to make them - or Koresh himself - the butt of the joke, and it turns what might have been a simplistic and cruel comedy record in less deft hands into a genuinely tragic musical story.”
I also bought the lyrics booklet, which turned out to be an awesome idea since it has historical footnotes, I kid you not, as well as a couple about how much Simon Indelicate hates the Kinks, idk. My favourite songs are Something Going Down In Waco, The Ballad of the ATF and I Don’t Care If It’s True. I sort of really want to put it on as an actual musical, but there probably isn’t much interest here in Australia.
My prompt: I would like to see the Siege/surrounding events from the perspective of Jewel (the one who sings A Single Thrown Grenade).
Alternately, if the srs-bzns fic isn't taking you, I would be into some sort of hilarious sci-fi AU involving the ATF, or any of the other characters really, In Space.
Elaboration: I really like the way they tried to give a representative of the young girls Koresh seduced a bit of agency, a personality, etc. It makes me want to hear more of the story from that sort of perspective. It would be realistic for her to die at the end, but tha is not compulsory.
...and if you're stuck in lulz mode, everything is better In Space :P
Danger Days (album)
Ahhh, My Chemical Romance. Subject of so many emo jokes, yet quite obviously such awesome nerds. This is widely known (at least, among the fans I widely know) as their LARPing In The Desert album. If you’re not familiar, google the music videos! They’re pretty great, it’s like a cross between a cowboy movie and a superhero comic. Brightly coloured outfits! Guns (also brightly coloured)! Dudes in giant mouse heads (I don’t even)!
Like many others, I made myself a costume in the wake of the album launch, so you could say I’m sort of into it :P this is actually probably the most popular fandom on my request list, because it got heaps of Bandom trickle-down. Trickle-across? whatever. I’ve requested it before, though I think then I was more focused on Show Pony, as I had not yet had the following idea:
My prompt: I know the music videos never really established whose kid Grace Kelly played. I’d like a fic in which her mother is Jet Star’s sister, and her father is Korse, which is why he kidnapped her. Presumably the mom is absent due to being deeply under cover or in some section of the resistance that’s even less child-friendly than the Killjoys.
You can basically go wherever you want with that idea, backstory or rescuefic or whatever. Bonus points for Grace bonding with Show Pony.
Addendum: If you want to do some sort of Maximum Rock'n'Roll Crossover between this and Guitar Wolf, that would pretty amazing xD
In conclusion, as you can see I'm pretty well-balanced between options for lulz and options for thinkyfic, both of which are things I enjoy greatly. I don't have literary triggers for you to avoid, and my major squick is Adam Sandler. I'd do the whole spiel about woman/queer/etc-friendly writing, but I think my prompts and flailing sort of do that for me - stick to the spirit if not the letter (because optional details, of course, are optional) of my requests and you should do fine. The Hainish Cycle prompt is the only one that really should have sexual content, but any of them can if that's the way you roll. I hope I've provided enough options for you to find one that really grabs you. Have fun :)
Crossposted from Dreamwidth |
comments there